Colonized and Racist Indigenous Campus Tour- Research-in-Brief

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs Volume 4 2019 Colonized and Racist Indigenous Campus Tour: Research-in-Brief Robin Minthorn University of Ne

Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student

Affairs

Volume 4

2019

Colonized and Racist Indigenous Campus Tour: Research-in-Brief

Robin Minthorn

University of New Mexico

Christine A Nelson

Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/jcshesa

Part of the Higher Education Commons

Recommended Citation

Minthorn, R S & Nelson, C A (2018) Colonized and racist Indigenous campus tour: Research-in-brief Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs, 4(2), 7-11

This Research-in-Brief is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals and Magazines at Loyola

eCommons It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons For more information, please contact

ecommons@luc.edu

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License

Colonized and Racist Indigenous

Campus Tour

RESEARCH-IN-BRIEF

Robin Starr Minthorn, University of New Mexico

Christine A Nelson, University of Denver

ISSN 2377-1306

© 2019

All rights reserved for the authors of this study Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs is an open access journal and all pages are available for copying and distribution under a Creative Commons Attribution/Non-Commercial/

No Derivative works license Any authorized work must be properly attributed to the author(s) Work cannot be used for commercial means or changed in any way

Minthorn & Nelson Indigenous Campus Tour

As the title of the article demonstrates, our

con-ceptual contributions are modeled through a

campus tour By framing our contributions

through a campus tour model, non-Indigenous

ad-ministrators and staff who work on college campuses

can begin to better connect to how Indigenous

stu-dents may feel when seeing a campus that overtly

glorifies colonial conquest narratives Throughout the

colonized and racist campus tour, we do not highlight

the colonialist triumphs of the institution; rather, we

uncover the embedded racist and genocidal values

that are often cherished through dominant campus

tours To do this, we seek to provide an Indigenous

community narrative (Gilmore & Smith, 2005;

Mc-Carty, Romero, & Zepeda, 2006) to problematize

how administrators and staff see their campuses and

how they may be centering colonial histories while

silencing Indigenous histories and students in the

process The motivation to develop this conceptual

project is directly influenced by our daily interactions

with Indigenous students, and witness to their

inter-pretations of their experiences on a university

cam-pus Therefore, it is imperative to assert the value of

Indigenous methods and to emphasize storytelling as

in Deloria and Wildcat’s definition of power (2001)

Each portion of this paper holds energy that informs

subsequent sections

An Incomplete History of Higher

Education Institutions

Typically, when describing the student population

that has connections to the land now known as the

United States of America, the term American Indian/

Alaska Native (AI/AN) is ascribed by administrators,

policy makers, and political leaders We purposely

avoid referring to this student population as AI/AN

to push back against the colonial constraints of this

term By erasing the connotation of what it means to

be Indigenous, the meaning of, and the connection to

the land that Indigenous students and communities

have is ignored and replaced with the oppressive value

systems that are in place today The term Indigenous

is not meant to homogenize the unique aspects of each tribal nation, as there are currently over 560 dif-ferent federally-recognized tribes in the United States; rather, it is used in recognition of their commonly held values and connection to the land In relation

to campus climate and inclusive environments, the word “Indigenous” privileges the connection of the first peoples of this land to place and space Evidence

of this argument can be witnessed through Indige-nous value systems and theoretical paradigms (Tuck

& Yang, 2012) To further justify the use of “Indige-nous” we employ one such framework, called Power and Place, to name, criticize, and dismantle the op-pressive system of modern higher education institu-tions through a more complete historical positioning

An Indigenized Theory of Space and Place

(and Broadly)

In the more developed article, we highlight the-ory on space and place broadly and how that is con-ceptualized, and then provide an Indigenous thought

on space and power Highlighting this is essential to understanding how space, specifically on college cam-puses, impacts Indigenous student experiences

Space and Place Broadly

Important to mention in this conversation, are the ways space and place are often conflated to mean the same thing In our view, space and place are rela-tional Space is primarily the physical location, while place is the point of interaction and the ability to process the meaning of those interactions At times these interactions may be linked to a physical space, but not always Sites of Indigenous genocide and as-similation within the United States, particularly the Southwestern part of the United States, are beginning

to acknowledge how discursive spaces are central to understanding the unique historical and contempo-rary struggle of Indigenous populations, especially

in relation to higher education settings There is a growing body of research exploring the historical and present-day struggle over, and conceptualization of,

Indigenous spaces within and outside of formal

edu-cation  Meanwhile, there is also a growing

acknowl-edgment that space and place inform the

education-al experiences of Native American college students

Minthorn & Marsh (2016) conducted a photo

elic-itation study which sought to understand the lived

experiences of Native American college students, and

found that the experiences of Native American college

students deeply connects place to emotions These

emotions include positive and negative experiences of

higher education institutions, demonstrating the

im-portance for campuses to understand how to create

positive spaces and acknowledge the role of

coloniza-tion in the narrative of the institucoloniza-tion’s success

Indigenous Lens – Power and Place

Indigenous scholars Vine Deloria and Daniel

Wildcat (2001) articulate the relational aspects of

the world through an Indigenous framework called

Power and Place In an abbreviated version of Deloria

and Wildcat’s (2001) contribution, we articulate

how power and place complicate and expand upon

common higher education buzzwords, like sense of

belonging, campus climate, and inclusion

It is through the concepts of Power and Place

that a campus environment is no longer a collection

of inanimate objects (e.g buildings, parking spaces,

dorms, libraries), but a space that consists of energies

constantly interacting The energies that animate and

inanimate objects produce is what Deloria and Wildcat

(2001) call Power Power, through their approach, is

not about domination Rather, it recognizes that all

entities contribute a force to the human experience

Place is where those energies interact and engage with

each other Once again, Deloria and Wildcat (2001)

do not recognize place solely as a physical space, but

a space that considers the historical, emotional, and

socio-political contexts that ultimately create and

inform experiences In terms of studying the context

of higher education at the intersection of Indigenous

student experiences, Power and Place offer an

opportune lens to unpacking the implicit biases and

domination of settler colonialism

The Colonized and Racist Indigenous

Campus Tour

The Colonized and Racist Indigenous Campus Tour begins to overtly name the systemic and oppres-sive values that college campuses perpetuate at the expense of Indigenous students, and other students from communities who have a troubling past with colonization and genocide  While hypothetical, the campus tour stops are substantiated by historical re-sources and images found on the University (UNM) campus At each stop, we offer a critique by centering perspectives that challenge settler colonial values and genocidal undertones

Stop 1: “Welcome to Hodgins Hall, UNM’s first building”

By building institutional legacy, campus tour attendees can begin to sense the pride in attending this university Additional facts deemed relevant by campus administrators would further establish the long-standing nature of the institution  There con-tinues to be a lack of inclusion or acknowledgment

of the Indigenous peoples of the area when trying to instill a sense of institutional legacy Campus tours continue to embody the notion that the historical founding of UNM occurred on barren land, and from

a need for a higher educational institution to serve the needs of the people Often the people who the institution sought to serve did not include the Indig-enous populations and people whose connection to these lands were there for centuries prior to coloni-zation This is a settler narrative of UNM and one that continues to impact the Indigenous students and communities today

Stop 2: Viewing the Dorms

The experience of viewing student housing is of-ten the selling point of the campus tour and is meant

to entice young people and their families with the wonderful amenities offered on campus However, it

Minthorn & Nelson Indigenous Campus Tour

is during this stage of the campus tour where

appro-priation and misuse of Indigenous tribal names are

normalized and strip the Indigenous community of

their ability to assert agency on college campuses In

the case of UNM, the current and historical practices

normalize genocide and colonization, as evidenced by

the Indigenous appropriation of building architecture

and names The full-length article highlights

institu-tional practices that continue to be enacted in today’s

context

Stop 3: Touring the Library

The library tour is at the epicenter of conveying

the university’s prowess in creating and transmitting

knowledge However, upon further investigation, there

continues to be a trend of hostility toward Indigenous

students in spaces The UNM Zimmerman library

is highlighted to demonstrate how institutional

practice actively engages in cultural appropriation and

oppression through architecture and artistic murals

Stop 4: Visiting the President’s Office

Throughout a campus tour, it is common for the

tour guide to mention institutional leaders to draw

upon the sense of pride and prowess an institution

embodies, as is the case with UNM Evidence of this

has been established by previous campus tour stops

This section continues the thread of erasure of

Indig-enous energies and power through colonialism, but

rather than focus on how the dominant narrative has

removed and appropriated Indigenous energies and

power, we focus on the actions Indigenous students

have taken to reclaim an Indigenous community

narrative that pushes back against the organizational

forces that are imbued with colonial and racist

ten-dencies

Next Steps

Through the colonized and racist campus tour, it

is evident that representations on campus are

power-ful, yet oppressive As institutional leaders strive to

make postsecondary institutions more inclusive, it is

imperative to begin the process with the relationship between place and space Though many of the build-ings and images are inanimate from a western view-point, an Indigenous lens demonstrates that each of these items carry energy

Acknowledging Settler Colonialism within Higher Education Historical Narratives

We encourage administrators, practitioners, and researchers to familiarize themselves with settler co-lonialism paradigms and use them to expand histor-ical analysis on their respective campuses In terms

of campus tours, we recommend that each campus evaluate the (un)intended messages embedded in the history and lore told during prospective students’ first experience on their campus

Acknowledging Indigenous Populations

It is imperative that each higher education insti-tution begin to formally acknowledge the Indigenous populations that reside within the proximity of their campuses, and to also acknowledge those whose lands traditionally occupied theses spaces in ceremonies, events and activities held by the institution, particu-larly when physical and visual representation of these populations is absent from the campus and surround-ing community Acknowledgement of Indigenous peoples also creates a space to discuss the level of vis-ibility of Indigenous people and their traditions on campus

Revisit Building Name Policies and Existing Names that Promote Colonialism

Institutional policy needs to be rewritten to for-malize the role of community voice when develop-ing and amenddevelop-ing campus builddevelop-ing names A formal process would create consistency and honor an insti-tution’s commitment to be inclusive of Indigenous communities The failure to institutionalize processes and protocols allows institutional leaders and admin-istrators, particularly those in residential life, to con-tinue the oppressive practices that are rooted in settler

Recommended Citation:

Minthorn, R S & Nelson, C.A (2018)

Colonized and racist Indigenous campus

tour Journal of Critical Scholarship on

Higher Education and Student Affairs, 4(1),

73-88

colonialism For institutional leaders to tout

inclusiv-ity, we recommend that policies related to physical

campus space be assessed for inclusivity of Indigenous

peoples After all, all institutions of higher education

reside on traditional Indigenous land

Concluding Thoughts

        In conclusion, we offer this piece as an

entry-way to beginning to tell the untold stories of

Indige-nous peoples within historical narratives, symbolism

and present-day stories There is an intimate

connec-tion that Indigenous peoples hold and value regarding

space and land, that is not tied to ownership, rather,

it is ancestral and spiritual We hope that by bringing

the perils of history and current stories of UNM to

light, it will encourage others to investigate how

set-tler colonialism pervades almost every aspect of

insti-tutional memory and life Let us not forget that what

seemed to be “barren and desolate” actually held

cen-turies of connections to plants, medicines, creation

stories and other meaningful connections that are

for-gotten in the current narratives of higher education

institutions

Author Biographies

Robin Starr Minthorn, Ph.D. (Kiowa/Umatilla/

Nez Perce/Apache and Assini-boine), is an Associate Professor

at the University of New Mex-ico in Educational Leadership and Native American Studies

Dr Minthorn is the coordi-nator for the Native American Leadership in Education (NALE) doctoral cohorts in

the Educational Leadership Program and currently

serves as the Kiva Club co-advisor Her research

in-terests include: Indigenous leadership in higher

edu-cation, intergenerational Indigenous leadership

per-spectives and Native college student experiences She

is co-editor of the “Indigenous Leadership in Higher

Education” published through Routledge and

“Re-claiming Indigenous Research in Higher Education” published through Rutgers University Press

Christine A Nelson, Ph.D (Diné and Laguna

Pueblo), is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver’s Morgridge College of Education – Higher Education Department The research she engages with challenges the status quo of higher education for Indigenous students and communities Her primary research interest focuses on finance in higher education, which ranges from student experiences

to policy Chris also infuses Indigenous perspectives and methods to explore the long-term impacts of pre-college access programs Ultimately, as first-generation college student, she works for underserved communities and their students, who deserve every chance to access, persist, and complete a higher education degree